This, then, constitutes the future body. First, it is an organization connecting us with the outward universe of space and time. Second, it is identical with the present true body. Third, it is a development and advance of this into a higher organization. Let us now inquire what are the evidences and proofs of _this future body_. How do we know, or why do we think, that we shall have any such body? The first proof of a future bodily existence is its reasonableness. There is a law of gradation in the universe by which the seed unfolds gradually into the stalk, the bud into the flower, the flower into the fruit. We see a gradual progress of vegetable life into animal, and a gradual transition from the lower forms of animal existence to the higher. The transition is so gradual that it is very difficult to say where vegetables end and where animals begin. Radiated animals ascend towards the mollusks, the mollusks towards the articulata, the articulata towards the vertebrata. And through this last class we see a steady ascent from one form of organization to another; from fishes to reptiles, from reptiles to birds, from birds to mammalia, until by steady rise we reach the human body, in delicacy, beauty, and faculty the crown of all. Why should we suppose this the end of bodily existence? Why not rather that this is to pass into a still more noble and beautiful type of organization? After this gradual development, why suppose the enormous change to a purely spiritual existence? Is it not more reasonable to suppose, instead, a higher order of bodily life? If we may look at the question for a moment from a metaphysical point of view, we shall find it hard to comprehend the possibility of personal existence hereafter apart from bodily organization. Everything which is, must be either somewhere, or everywhere, or nowhere; that is, it must be present in some particular point of space, or omnipresent through all space, or wholly out of space. But to be wholly out of space is to lose that which distinguishes one thing from another, for all distinctions which we can conceive of are distinctions in space and time. To be everywhere is to be omnipresent, which is an attribute belonging to God and not to finite being, and would imply absorption into the divine nature. Therefore personal existence is existence somewhere in space, but locality in space is an attribute of body, not of spirit, and implies bodily existence.